Clutch question
 

A friend is coming over this morning to work on his, new to him, manual "78" 240D. The clutch does not engage until way to far out. I have searched the archives and have found nothing about this. We had planned to bleed the system with the speedy bleeder. My first thought was the car needs a new clutch. Could it need adjusting (wishful thinking?) Does anyone think bleeding will help? I figure it will be good practice if nothing else.

Bleeding help, probably not but new fluid will be good for the system.

Its been a long time since I worked on those clutches, but it seems like there was an adjustment on the slave cylinder or on the rod going from the clutch pedal to the master cylinder.

P E H

Yes, you can adjust the pedal-to-master-cylinder connection. It's described in Haynes, but I don't think it is in the MB manual.

PEH

We bleed the system using the "front brake slave to the clutch slave with a hose" system. Seemed to work ok but no way to know :confused: until starting up and using it and we had the valve cover off for a valve adjust. Anyway when we tried it she had the peddle feel of a new clutch job. YES :D The odometer and trip odometer got the "gray gear wheel non slip" fix, soldered a jumper on the dash lights rheostat that didn't work. I gota say that most of this information came from this group. Its very cool to take this stuff apart and have a reasonable chance of fixing it, course I will feel better when I know he made it home without breaking down.

I'll bet you have a bad slave cylinder. Start looking for another one as you are going to need it.

Slave and master clutch cylinder rebuild kits are available

P E H

I agree, you probably have a bad slave or master cylinder.

I did not realize the problem with mine and I destroyed the synchros for 2nd and 4th and 3rd makes a loud noise.

A new transmission is being installed today.

Jovan

sorry to be so late in responding, my keyboard crapped out this morning. :mad: So are you guys saying that because the clutch had so much slack in it and even though we got it back to feeling normal, its gona need a new slave? If so I had best give him a call and tell him the bad news, the rest of the repairs worked worked anyway:D

If it's working right, it's working right. What's the problem. With my clutch problem, it worked right about 75% of the time and otherwise didn't . I finally replaced the clutch master cylinder and that solved the problem--back to normal.

dweller

Ya "If it's working right, it's working right" thats what I figured but by the sound of most of the posts that may not be the case. This is a new car to my friend and the only thing we know about it is it sat for a couple of years.

If it's working, don't sweat it. If the master or slave is bad, the pedal will fall to the floor and the clutch won't work. This might only happen 1 in 10 times, but if it happens at all, you probably have a master or slave bad. If the pedal doesn't fall to the floor, he's in good shape.

thanks for the help all , sounds like its a matter of being ready to replace a master or slave if the pedal winds up on the floor.

have a good Xmas eve, eve all.:cool:

did his clutch slip when the car was going and he accelerated it hard because im having the same feel to the clutch just recently and it slips when i accelerate hard

djjeant

No, it did not slip but with a little air more in the system, who knows. Bleeding would be worth a try and its real easy with the car up on stands. Hose from clutch slave to R\F brake slave, crack fittings, pump brakes. :) thats all it took in our case and its still OK. Good Luck

I would not replace any parts just yet. If the master cylinder set up is anything like the one on my 307d, it's designed so that if the fluid in the master cylinder gets low, air gets into the clutch slave circuit before it gets into the braking system. (the feed tube for the clutch system comes out about half an inch above the bottom of the reservoir) I assume this occurs to stop a person from driving the vehicle when the brake/clutch fluid gets low. I would guess that the fluid got low at one time and the clutch system took a gulp of air. Same thing happened on my 307d. Bleed the slave cylinder and I was back in action with no further problems.